Feeders hitting and breaking needles?
I've been having consistent problems with broken needles, where the latch itself ends up too bent to open and close correctly or, in a few cases, actually breaks off completely. It doesn't happen with every swatch, but it happens very often. It also happens regardless of what type of stitch I'm attempting, from simple to complex, and no matter what yarn I use.
I tried setting the height and position of the yarn feeders as described in this article, but this led to feeders regularly hitting needles during knitting (with audible collision sounds and occasional needles bending and breaking). There was another article I found at some point about setting the feeder height (I can't find it again right now) that described setting the feeders to be 0.5mm from the needles in each bed, and when I tried that I ended up with problems actually forming stitches because the yarn fed much too high.
Is there another aspect here that I'm missing? I'm not sure what else might be wrong, except that I once (while knitting very slowly to watch the stitches) caught the carriage pushing a carrier along the rail not by the center, but by the back slope portion of the carrier bow. This caused the feeder to misalign with the needes trying to form stitches. It was only halfway down the knit panel that the carriage finally locked into the carrier bow properly, and it caused tons of missed stitches and a few collisions. I was running very slow though, so maybe that was the issue in this particular case?
I'm hoping somebody has advice on what I might be missing, since this has been a huge frustration and I really have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
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Hi Lula, could you share a few pictures of your feeders close to the needle bed to see their exact position? Could you also share a picture of the top part of the feeder, the part attached to the rail? Sometimes, when needles hit the feeders, they get misaligned and can't work properly until they are adjusted again. Thanks!
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Thanks Gerard Rubio, I'm hoping it's something as simple as that and that maybe I'm just failing to get them realigned correctly.
I took a bunch of pictures of the current feeder alignment:
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Oops, some of the pictures failed to upload the first time.
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Thank you for all those pictures Lula. The tip of the feeders look ok. I would adjust feeder one a bit, though, to be more like this, in red below. A bit more towards the rear bed.
Are your brushes in good shape? Could you move the carriage to the position where you placed the feeders for the pictures, and take a similar image of them? Thanks!
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Hi Gerard Rubio. I had to step away from the knitting machine for a while for irl reasons, so I'm only just now getting back to it and I've figured out what the issue is, but not how to fix it.
It seems like the issue is with the carriage and the yarn carriers. The tabs beneath the carriage (I don't know what they're called) that are used to pick up the yarn carriers and guide them back and forth on the rails are causing a delay for two of the six yarn carriers. For whatever reason the tabs are catching for a second on the back slope of the yarn carriers before settling into that middle section, causing the carriage to push the yarn carrier ahead of where it's supposed to be, which is causing it to collide with a break needles. I was having so much trouble finding the issue because it only happens to some of the carriers (3 and 4), only sometimes, and only when the yarn carrier is close enough to the piece that it will collide with raising needles.
Here's a video of what I'm talking about: Sometimes it seems to push the carrier for much further than in the video, maybe based on speed? I'm not sure.
I'm hoping you know what I can do to solve this issue :(
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Hi Lula, Thank you for sharing the video—the issue is clear now. Can you check if your feeder is too tightly or loosely attached to the rail?
I made this video to show you how tight the feeders must be attached. They have to have just a tiny bit of play, as little as possible, without clamping the feeder on the rail. Once adequately oiled, it has to move smoothly in both directions.
If you follow these instructions and it continues to happen, I would slowly increase tightness. There should be a point where friction between the feeder and the rail is greater than the one between the selector and the tab; then, the selector should slide up and fall within the tabs. Please let me know how it goes. Thanks!
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Thank you so much Gerard Rubio , I followed your instructions and got it working perfectly.
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Glad to hear that, Lula ! Let us know if you need further assistance.
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